Darwin’s famous Westpac building sold after EOI process

A landmark Darwin building has changed hands for just the second time in 20 years. Read who bought it.

A Sydney-based property company with extensive interests in the Northern Territory has bought Darwin’s landmark Westpac building.

Sandran, developers of the $75m Manunda Place project on Knuckey Street, paid $7.625m for the heritage listed building.

The building was sold through an expression of interest process that sales agent Craig Inkster from McGees Property said attracted wide interest from across the country.

“We presented the property on the market as one of the most prized pieces of CBD real estate,” Mr Inkster said. “You didn’t need to be an expert to read how unique this property was.

“One thing that hasn’t changed with this property since the 1940s is that it’s a prime piece of real estate. We had a wide spread of bids from across the country, which is always good.

Darwin’s Westpac bank building has sold.

“We always like to see locals buying but it’s always good to see others coming in and seeing the good in our market which is why it was good to have a spread of interest from local and interstate buyers.”

Widely identified as being at 24 Smith Street, the Crown Lands Department lists the property as 26 The Mall (Smith Street). The sale was officially concluded on April 26.

The building previously changed hands when NT cattleman Grant Heaslip paid $4.08m in June 2003.

As well as being heritage listed, the bank is iconic because it survived Japanese bombs and Cyclone Tracy’s category five winds.

The bank was built on Crown Land with assistance from a $1.5m Commonwealth civil and defence work stimulus package gifted to the Territory after years of economic stagnation. The building opened in March 1940 and was closed within two years when the Japanese raided. The bank was badly damaged by fire after another bombing raid in June.

When the bank resumed operations in March 1946, it was from the garage out the back because of extensive damage to the main building.

Mr Inkster said it was good to have a quick turnover for this city asset.

“The new owner is happy, the tenants are happy, the vendors are happy. It’s often the case when you’re selling real estate in Darwin you end up with one or two serious contenders with one a bit hungrier than the rest,” Mr Inkster said.

“With this it was quite a competitive situation, which was really good because it’s a unique asset. When you have an outstanding agent like McGees working on a sale, things seem to happen quicker and we got the results on an outstanding piece of real estate.”